


a regular florence nightingale

by bawling



Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-26
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2021-01-02 16:55:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21164987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bawling/pseuds/bawling
Summary: There were no stories about Ronan Lynch.There were stories that featured Ronan Lynch as the protagonist, just as there were stories that featured Richard Campbell Gansey III, and someone curiously named Blue Sargent, and other comparable figures from Adam’s rosy Southern upbringing. But the stories were never about them in the same way that Adam’s stories were about home.





	a regular florence nightingale

**Author's Note:**

> i literally started this in june how does this always happen to me. anyways stan the crying club
> 
> find me on tumblr at @bawling or @lindenmere :)

The situation, such as it was, was this: Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch, and, mysteriously, a motorcycle.

The room Fletcher had been sharing with Adam for the better part of three months was transformed into a compelling, if slightly horrifying, contemporary painting. The inexplicable textures of disembodied crab legs, bright liquid guts, and drops of blood splattered across the floor and walls.

Fletcher’s eyes roved over all this. His eyes landed on Ronan’s hand, knuckles white as he grasped the Pride flag Fletcher had ordered off Amazon like a makeshift lance.

“My flag.”

Adam shut the open door hurriedly behind him.

“The walls.”

The crab guts were peeling the paint off them and something had left several large dents in the plaster.

“The beds.”

Both sets of sheets were torn and ruined.

“The window.”

One of the panes above Adam’s desk had been shattered.

“A motorcycle.”

Ronan seemed to notice that said motorcycle was expelling exhaust into the room. He fumbled his hands over it, flag clacking against the handlebars, trying to figure out how to turn it off. Eventually he found what, from Fletcher's side of the room, looked like a toggle switch bizarrely labeled _YES/NO_.

There was nothing overtly supernatural about the picture before him, but Fletcher was retreating to the tiny mental crevasses he reserved for fanciful explanations to impossible problems. His admittedly limited imagination failed him. There was only several thousand dollars’ worth of damage to a Harvard dorm, the vacant slump of Adam’s shoulders, and a proctor on the way.

Adam said, very simply:

“Help me.”

*

One week earlier, Fletcher had been studying in the Yard, grass nearly obscured by a smattering of golden sycamore leaves.

The November-sparse lawn gave Eliot their pick of study spots that were normally claimed early on Saturdays. The rest of them—Fletcher, Adam, Gillian and Benjy—had been assembled by loaded request or poorly concealed manipulation. Eliot's insistence that it was still warm enough to study outdoors was proving largely untrue. Barely twenty minutes in and Gillian’s mood was plummeting along with her body temperature.

“Will you quit that? I’m already seconds from contracting hypothermia.”

Eliot withdrew their frosty water bottle from where they’d been unconsciously pressing it into Gillian’s arm as they sat side by side in a pile of leaves.

“You’re being such a Taurus right now.” Eliot seized a handful of leaves and tossed them at Gillian. They mostly ended up on Benjy. “Try to have a sense of adventure.”

“This isn’t adventure. This is impractical.”

“Adaptability and impulsiveness are the hallmarks of my Gemini sun, Gillian. Along with _high intelligence_.”

Gillian rolled her eyes. Fletcher brushed a leaf from the copy of _Advanced Cell Biology _he was sharing with Adam—in theory, at least. Adam’s distracted fingers tapped along his spiral notebook, like they’d forgotten they were meant to be taking notes.

No one else seemed to notice Adam’s fidgeting. He wore his nerves as well as his neatly-pressed shirts.

Fletcher figured it was the change in schedule that was making Adam uncomfortable. Rooming with Adam Parrish was to know there wasn’t a minute of Adam’s day that wasn’t used to maximum efficiency. The only spontaneous events in his life seemed to be the erratic phone calls he received from one Ronan Lynch.

Adam was texting Ronan right now. Fletcher could always tell—Adam had a particular rueful smile that was reserved for all things Ronan Lynch. He wore it as he stared down at the phone in his lap instead of copying down the main functions of the four types of biomolecules.

“Kahne mentioned there’s a giant study session for 1A next Saturday in Widener,” Gillian said, barely looking up from her pile of printed PDFs.

“I’m in.” Eliot chimed in immediately. They nudged Fletcher’s pillowy shoulder with their bony one. “Fletch?”

“Stop trying to make Fletch happen.” Eliot’s propensity for nicknames was as infamous as Fletcher’s propensity for monologuing, but he would continue to resist the wearing down of his title until his fortitude inevitably ran out. “But yes, that class is putting me into an early proverbial grave.”

“Adam?”

“I can’t.” They all looked up from their notes and stared. Even among the fastidious Harvard freshman class, Adam had managed to earn a reputation for never missing a supplementary chance to study. “Ronan’s coming for the weekend.”

Benjy screwed up his face.

“Who’s Ronan?”

Adam said _my boyfriend _in precise unison with Fletcher and Eliot’s wistful _his boyfriend_.

“You’ve got a boyfriend? God, I hadn’t heard.”

Gillian’s deadpan was, as they’d come to find, her way of saying she was very nearly ready to commit murder if you didn’t shut up. Adam's smile turned pleasantly smug as he ducked his face into _Advanced Cell Biology_. Benjy’s face remained scrunched.

“How did I miss this?”

“You’re new here.” Eliot tipped their head to rest pensively in their hands. “And Adam’s tight-lipped.”

It was true that knowledge of Ronan Lynch varied according to the length of time spent hanging out with Adam Parrish.

Fletcher supposed this meant that he knew the most. It was a testament to his luck that he and Adam had been assigned to room together. The first few weeks of class, they’d done everything together—brushed teeth side by side in their bathroom each morning, and ate sandwiches side by side in Lamont each evening as they poured over ludicrous amounts of reading that first-year students were warned about.

Next, it was Eliot, the mouthy extrovert who lived a floor below them in Thayer.

Fletcher remembered it by the particularly grim American Government quiz they’d been given earlier that day. He and Adam had been making their way up the back stairwell when they stumbled across Eliot, perched at the landing. They’d exchanged a look before brushing past them and onto the next flight. They were half way up when Adam stopped, brows knitted together.

“You go on up, I’ll be right there.”

He disappeared in the direction they’d come from. Fletcher could hear Adam’s even voice echoing up as he made his way up the rest of the stairs alone.

“Is everything okay?”

Fifteen minutes later, Fletcher looked up to see Adam unlocking their door, a tentative and slightly embarrassed Eliot trailing behind him.

“Welcome to our abode.” Fletcher bowed from his perch on the bedspread. “I’d offer you a tour, but it’s identical to yours.”

“We usually play cards in the common room, if you want to join in.”

After that, the three of them were a regular fixture.

Gillian had been a byproduct of her and Adam’s shared Life Sciences 1A course. Finally, Benjy, by way of too much to drink at Oktoberfest. And with that, the circle had become complete. Until the next lost soul came along for Adam to rescue, presumably.

“So?”

Eliot prodded Adam with more courage than the rest of them combined. They looked on with expectant interest in Adam’s direction. Adam shrugged.

“We went to the same prep school.”

“Where does he go to college?”

“He doesn’t.” 

Benjy gasped. Gillian frowned. Fletcher blinked. Eliot prodded again.

“Is he taking a gap year?”

“Something like that. Do you think Fletcher could stay at yours on Friday night?” Adam eyed Fletcher carefully. “If that’s okay with you.”

Eliot’s raised eyebrows were enough to return Adam to his usual unbreakable concentration, fidgeting firmly in check.

*

When Adam was a kid, he’d been very fond of the forest that lined the back of his family’s Virginia property.

He spent countless hours among the thick painted clusters of trees, talking to them, and listening as the wind whispered their answers back to him. They told him stories of kings from faraway places, of magic that still existed in the world, if only one had the tools to find it. His favorite tree stood in a slight clearing. It held itself in a way that said it wanted to be found—taller and wider than the others, with a great hollowed out belly where Adam liked to hide and imagine he could see glimpses of his future. 

On a morning in early spring, he snuck out of bed and out the backdoor while his parents slept. He drifted through mist that clung close to the manicured lawn, along a familiar winding path, until he saw his tree waiting for him. He started to climb it like he’d done a thousand times before, but as he reached for the highest branch, he felt the one under his feet give way. Adam hadn’t known it, but a rot had begun to spread. The forest he loved so much was dying. 

He tried to close his hand around another branch as he fell, but he was too much boy for its brittle arms to hold. The fall had cost him the hearing in his left ear.

Fletcher lay staring at the ceiling.

He was thinking about Adam’s deaf ear because he couldn’t sleep. He wanted to know if Adam was also awake, but his hearing ear was pressed to his pillow in the bed across from Fletcher’s. If he called out, Adam might wake up. He was a light sleeper.

Sometimes, on nights like this, Adam would tell him a story. He very much wanted Adam to tell him a story now.

“Adam?”

“Hm?” 

“Are you asleep?”

Adam rolled towards him. Fletcher couldn’t make out his face in the dark, but his soft voice was wry like a punchline.

“Are you?”

Fletcher’s insomnia was not a new phenomenon, but he’d found it environmentally exacerbated since moving into Thayer. To put it plainly, he was big and his bed was small, and that didn’t help things. He guessed that Adam’s restlessness was a byproduct of the workload. Brains like theirs didn’t like to slow down.

“It would seem I’m not.”

Silence settled around them comfortably for a long moment. Fletcher liked talking to Adam—he liked talking to anyone—but he liked this, too. He’d never had a friend he could be quiet with before Adam.

Adam was very good at being quiet.

“What’s your remedy for this sort of thing back home? Warm milk fresh from your father’s delicious and profitable ranch?”

There was an imperceptible shift in the air. Fletcher wouldn’t have felt it if not for the uncanny stillness in Thayer that night. Adam’s voice was just this side of hesitant when he replied.

“I usually talk to Ronan.”

“On the phone?” 

Adam laughed, an earnest, solitary burst from his gut.

“No, that’s a recent development.” Fletcher wondered what kind of development Adam meant exactly. In his experience, phones were a fairly standard part of nineteen-year-old American life. “Sometimes I stay at his family’s farmhouse.”

“Is it near your folk's place?”

“Not too far.”

“So, the famous Ronan Lynch has trouble sleeping like the rest of us mere mortals?”

Normally, Adam enjoyed this sort of selling up of the man he was clearly head over heels for. Fletcher waited for a witty retort, but it didn’t come. He peered over at him through the dark and saw Adam’s brows crumple together as he murmured the noun back to him. 

“Trouble.”

There were no stories about Ronan Lynch. 

There were stories that featured Ronan Lynch as the protagonist, just as there were stories that featured Richard Campbell Gansey III, and someone curiously named Blue Sargent, and other comparable figures from Adam’s rosy Southern upbringing. But the stories were never about them in the same way that Adam’s stories were about home.

“Will you tell me that story again? The one about the forest behind your house?” 

Adam started at the beginning.

He’d hit the ground, hard and fast, the left side of his head unprotected as he collided with the red earth. He felt a pop, and there was nothing but white noise, filling up his head, overflowing out his ears and his eye sockets and the tips of his toes, until it spilled out and filled up the whole damn world. He lay there, curled in on himself, swallowed up by the silence as it poked and prodded at the inside of his skull. He tried to call out—might have managed it—willed someone to find him, like one of the magicians in the stories he knew.

The next thing he felt were strong arms around him, lifting him up, cradling his head and the warm sound of his father’s voice. He sounded far away, even though Adam was pressed close against his chest.

_I’ve got you, Adam. Everything’s going to be alright._

Fletcher hovered on the edge of consciousness. For a moment, he clung to the unfamiliar drawl in Adam’s voice that gave his words the power to suspend time, and then he slipped into sleep. 

*

“So, where’d he find you crying?”

“What?”

Ronan Lynch did not belong in the Thayer common room. 

It wasn’t as if they’d had anything to go on, since Adam had never offered so much as a selfie and not even Eliot had been brave enough to ask, but they hadn’t been expecting Ronan to be so—well, however he was.

It was like trying to make sense of an accident you passed by on the side of the interstate. Just the sight of he and Adam, comfortably invading one another’s personal space during a game of Repo, was like intellectual rubbernecking. It wasn't until Gillian lured Adam away under the pretense of a group project that Ronan was left unguarded in their presence, icy posturing melting away into something that suspiciously resembled nerves.

Eliot clarified Benjy’s previous question. 

“When you met. Where were you crying?” 

Ronan Lynch did not strike Fletcher as someone who cried often, maybe ever. He looked as if he thought that _they_ thoughthe cried often, and this thought was causing him considerable distress. Fletcher patted his ample tummy before rumbling a response.

“So, he didn’t always collect criers, then. You’re pre-crying.”

Eliot considered Ronan, head cocked in careful observation.

“Maybe he doesn’t date criers.”

“You’re going to have to back this truck up.”

“We’re the Crying Club.” Benjy explained. “We were all criers.” 

“Adam Parrish and the Crying Club, like a band.” Fletcher said. “He has a nose for us. Like a superhero. Somewhere on the Harvard campus someone is hidden in a stairwell crying right now, and Adam is on his way to find them and comfort them and give them someone to play cards with on a Friday night.” 

“Yeah, he’s always been a regular Florence Nightingale.”

Ronan's overt sarcasm gave Fletcher the distinct impression that they were talking about two different Adam Parrishes. He wondered if Ronan was thinking the same thing.

“They say opposites attract.”

Eliot absently contributed to the conversation as they took a photo of Ronan’s winning lot and put their head down to text it to their Repo-dedicated group chat. Ronan scoffed. 

“That’s me. He saves people, I take their lunch money.”

Benjy had stopped collecting cards and instead pensively eyed the stack he’d made.

“I envy him. I wish I had his family.” 

Eliot’s fingers paused in their texting.

“Yeah. I wish my dad could meet his dad. I hate my father.”

“He has such wonderful Southern family stories.” Fletcher thought about Adam’s comforting voice in the dark of their room. Ronan Lynch of all people had to know what that was like. “He’s like Twain without the racism. His words, the gravy, our ears, the biscuits.”

Ronan Lynch did not, in fact, look like he knew what that was like. He stared at Fletcher with such impenetrable control that he felt as if he ought to repeat himself. He glanced towards Benjy and Eliot. They looked as thoroughly confounded as he felt.

Adam came to collect Ronan before he had the chance to repeat himself, at any rate. They exchanged their goodbyes, which included an uncouth bump of Ronan’s knuckles against Fletcher’s own, and Gillian’s parting expletive, which Ronan didn’t seem to notice.

“That man is very fetch.” 

“Fetch_ing_.” Eliot corrected. Gillian made a face in their direction. They shrugged. “In a non-competitive, terrified sort of way.”

“How do you think they met?” Benjy pulled the rest of the deck towards himself. He shifted it into a sloppy stack and attempted to shuffle without much luck. Adam was their designated shuffler. His nimble fingers had a kind of gracefulness with the cards, one that only came with practice. “Emo Night at the only gay biker bar south of Washington?”

“Goth Night at the country club.” Gillian countered. “I bet he had a Britney phase.”

“If that man knows the lyrics to _Toxic_, Adam should put a ring on it _before _graduation. Your move, Fletch.”

Later, after Gillian had reasserted her reign as Repo champion, they dispersed from the common room—Gillian and Benjy back to their respective buildings, and Fletcher and Eliot up the back stairs that lead to the dormitory floors.

Fletcher hefted his satchel more securely over his shoulder as Eliot fished for keys at the bottom of their bag.

“Did Adam seem different to you tonight?”

The charms on Eliot’s keychain jangled musically as they turned them in the slot.

“Different how?”

“I’m not entirely sure myself.” 

The door swung in and Eliot shrugged as they stepped back to let Fletcher shuffle through.

“He’s a boy in love, and love makes people act wack.” Eliot sashayed through the room, dumped their backpack onto their desk chair, and flopped face up onto their bed. “Who knows, Fletch. Maybe someday we’ll be the ones acting insane in front of him.”

Fletcher commandeered a throw blanket and a heart-shaped pillow from Eliot’s bed as they brushed their teeth in the bathroom. He settled on the floor, blanket stretching thin over him as he shifted his head on the lumpy pillow.

In the dark, Fletcher considered the improbability of Adam Parrish.

Maybe it had taken the sight of him side by side with Ronan Lynch for Fletcher to properly notice it, or maybe it had been the carefully neutral expression on Ronan’s face. In any case, there were little pinpoints appearing all over Fletcher’s Adam-shaped shelter.

“I can hear you thinking from up here.”

Fletcher blinked. Eliot was peering at him, their face glowing by the light of a game of Candy Crush on their phone. They smiled, an infectious silly kind of smile that came from nowhere.

“You wanna play? Come on, I’ll show you a hack I saw on Reddit that gets you a free life.”

Fletcher climbed under the covers, tummy pushing Eliot’s tiny frame up against the wall. They didn’t seem to mind.

Fletcher watched for a while as Eliot babbled and tapped their fingers over the colorful squares, their chipped nail polish glinting in the harsh light. He got his turn eventually.

*

The next morning went nothing like any other morning had ever gone.

As soon as Fletcher reached the third floor landing he could hear the commotion. Sleep-deprived students were loitering in the hall, furiously texting, murmuring to one another in annoyed cadences.

Fletcher nudged his big body through the crowd, making his way towards the room. There were unpleasant smacks and thuds and squishes coming from behind the door, accompanied by the occasional grunt or shout. Fletcher could hear Adam chanting _God, Ronan, God _as he pounded on the door. 

“_Adam Parrish_. What the hell is going on? They’re gonna call the proctor.”

“Fletcher, look, I…” 

Adam stammered unintelligibly as Fletcher pushed in the door and took in the scene as best he could. The dorm was ruined. The proctor was on the way. There was a motorcycle. And yet, the most improbable thing were Adam’s two simple words that hung in the exhaust-scented air:

_Help me._

Adam Parrish stood in front of him, but Fletcher didn’t really recognize him. Even Ronan Lynch was eyeing Adam with trepidation, the genuine shock rendering him younger and wilder and less scary.

Apart from this baffling appearance of crab guts in his bed and dents in the walls, Fletcher had never heard Adam ask for help. He pictured the younger Adam, the one from his stories, on the ground, not knowing if he’d called out or stayed silent. Maybe Adam Parrish had never asked for help. Maybe he’d only thought he had, and was just now discovering how the word weighted on his tongue.

Adam’s shoulders sagged, normally set and square and more doubtless than the rest of them ever were. 

There was, horribly, unavoidably, a knock on the door.

Adam’s shoulders sunk further into his body. It was like whatever had been giving him the convincing shape that Fletcher was used to was slowly caving in. Without a word, he moved towards the door. Ronan reached out and caught Adam’s wrist as his hand went to the knob. He hissed Adam’s name under his breath.

“Adam—”

Adam looked at him, no heat in his expression. He was vacant in a way that Fletcher had never seen, like the imploding was in his head as much as it was in his body.

“There’s no point, Ronan.” He whispered. “It’s not like we can make it disappear.”

Ronan raised an eyebrow, as if he contended the point in a private sort of way that only the two of them would understand (it was certainly lost on Fletcher), but Adam shook his head.

“There’s no time. Even if we—” He stopped himself with a sideways glance at Fletcher. “I have to go out there. I don’t know, I guess I’ll think of something.” 

The knock came again. The sound of keys jangled ominously from the other side of the door. Adam turned towards it, rested an elegant hand on the doorknob, and breathed out.

It was that breath, defeated, like you never really thought you’d get away with the thing that was finally coming back for you, that caught fire in Fletcher’s chest.

“If I may,” The sound of his voice surprised even him. Adam pulled his hand back from the door like it was a hot plate. “I might not be able to get you all of it but I should be able to get you some of the time you need to do—whatever you _can_.” 

Adam and Ronan were watching him with matching keen eyes. It occurred to him that he’d said the word _can _in a particular way that surmised that Adam Parrish and Ronan Lynch _could do _things that existed outside the normal realm of human capability. Maybe he hadn’t meant to say it that way, but something about it made Adam’s feathery eyebrows lift so high that they pulled up his shoulders a little.

Fletcher was already pushing his way through the door when he heard Adam’s low voice murmur the name _Declan_.

Out in the hall, he bumped into Josh Hammond, Thayer’s second floor proctor.

“Fletcher! Is Adam in there? What’s going on?”

Josh Hammond was an exceedingly tall graduate student at Harvard Law. At the moment, he was wearing running shorts and a Harvard sweatshirt; his collie, Newton, treaded nervously at his feet. His only fault as a proctor was that he was friendly, which in turn, made him popular with Thayer’s more socially liberal freshman class residents.

“Good morning, Josh! I appreciate your swift attention to student crises. Where’s Erik?”

“Erik’s in upstate New York for the weekend with Evelyn and Tucker.” 

Their regular third floor proctor was Erik Phan—a mathematics PhD candidate whose tolerance for bullshit was at a perpetual zero. There was speculation among some of the students that this was because he’d done his undergrad at Amherst and was secretly punishing them for his own inadequacy, but Fletcher considered himself above this sort of talk. At least his dog had a plucky sort of name, Tucker, although it was possible that had more to do with his girlfriend than with Erik’s plucky side.

“I see. How’s Newton fairing these days?”

Despite himself, Josh Hammond found himself charmed by this bait for small talk, a fortuitous convenience that would’ve sorely failed if he had been Erik Phan.

“He’s good! We just got in from a run around the Square, as you can probably tell by my lazy pants.” He smiled sheepishly and gestured to his generic shorts. Fletcher didn’t notice a difference from how he normally dressed. Josh bent down and ruffled Newton’s ears. “He loves this fall weather.” 

“Ah yes, fall. The season of brisk air, earth-toned canopies and communicable diseases.”

Josh blinked at him.

“Pardon?”

“As I see you've already been informed, there’s been a bit of a disturbance coming from my shared room this morning.” Fletcher fluttered a hand towards the door behind him. “I’m afraid Adam has come down with a difficult flu.”

The sound of something goopy floated out from the room. Josh looked decidedly less interested in helping than he had a moment before.

“Is he alright? Does he need anything? It sounds—” He grimaced. “—messy.”

“Very.” 

“I should probably check on him, right?”

“On the contrary, he asks that no one else enters the room for the time being, as it would only wound his pride to be seen in such a state.” 

Josh nodded eagerly, like this line of logic was irrefutable truth and only coincidentally absolved him of having to spend his Saturday afternoon cleaning up vomit.

“Poor kid. Alright, well, let me know if he needs any—help, or, you know.”

He did not know, and Josh didn’t look like he knew, either. 

Fletcher blew out a breath as Josh whistled for Newton to follow him back to the second floor, but as he reached for the door handle, he saw Josh stop and turn back on his heels.

“Hey, sorry, one more thing. Do you have Adam’s parents’ numbers, by chance? His mom or dad, doesn’t matter. Just so I can contact them if Adam needs to go to the doctor or something.”

Fletcher reached for the phone in his pocket, then stopped. He did not have Adam’s home number. They’d perfunctorily exchanged emergency contacts on move-in day, but the only contact Adam had given him was Ronan’s number. He remembered Adam’s sardonic comment about dying long before Ronan actually picked up.

Fletcher tried to recall Adam ever speaking to either of his parents on the phone. 

“Unfortunately, I’m short Mr. Parrish’s emergency information, but I’ll be sure to have him call them and check-in at his earliest convenience.”

Josh frowned as another wave of gloopy sounds floated into the hall. Newton whined. 

“It doesn’t sound like that’ll be anytime soon.” 

Fletcher realized that Josh was experiencing a moral dilemma: Adam’s delicate stomach versus his responsibility to inform Adam’s guardians. Erik Phan would’ve happily let the hospital deal with Adam’s family as long as it meant that someone other than him was observing the rules. It was possible that Fletcher had oversold the state of Adam’s health.

“I know he’s—” Josh made an unpleasant shape with his mouth. “—not up for company but I’d feel a lot better if I could just pop in and grab the numbers from his phone.”

“If I may,” Fletcher repeated his earlier preposition as Josh made a move towards the door. “I could go in and retrieve the numbers, so—”

“It’s alright, I got it.”

Josh shot him a sympathetic smile, clearly touched by Fletcher’s gallant attempts to protect either Adam from embarrassment or him from vomit. Just as Fletcher felt he may have to resort to decidedly less polite tactics of distraction—in the name of Adam Parrish, he told himself, it was worth it—the sound of Newton barking made them both look over their shoulders.

A handsome man in a clean-cut suit strode towards them, skirting easily through the remaining throng of nosy students. Newton nipped at the heels of his expensive dress shoes as he approached, stark and incompatible with the casual atmosphere. He reached an assertive hand out to Josh.

“Declan, friend of the Parrish family. I’m looking for Adam, I believe this is his room?”

Josh shook Declan’s hand in a deferential sort of way. Fletcher considered Declan’s very straight teeth and his very neat tie and his very diplomatic voice. He looked very much like Ronan Lynch, if he’d been crowbarred into Gillian’s wardrobe. 

“Yeah, I was just about to call his parents. Josh, I’m a proctor here at Th—”

“I hear Adam’s under the weather. I’m here to check up on him, but his family thanks you for your concern.”

Josh opened and closed his mouth, like he was about to ask a question but lost his nerve at the last second. He looked from Declan to Fletcher, then stuffed his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie.

“Okie dokie.” 

He turned, whistled for Newton, and disappeared obediently in the direction of the stairs. Declan waited until he was out of view, then turned and rapped intently on the door. Adam’s voice sounded muffled on the other side.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Declan. Open up.” 

The door was pushed ajar from the inside and Declan moved for the small opening. Fletcher queued up behind him. Declan looked down at him with the same hard stare that Ronan had given them all the night before.

“I’m assuming you’re the roommate.” Fletcher nodded. “Adam will text you when everything’s taken care of. Until then, make sure his friends keep their noses out. Just tell them he’s sick. Understood?”

Declan didn’t wait for answer. He slipped silently through and the lock clicked behind him.

Fletcher needed a large cappuccino and something with chocolate, preferably dark. He wandered back downstairs in a murky haze of sea creatures and puking and suits, brain attempting to process large gaps in continuity, not least of which was the fact that Declan (if that was his real name) would’ve already had to have been on or on his way to campus to arrive so quickly after Adam called him.

“Fletch?”

Fletcher was nearly out Thayer’s double doors when he heard Eliot’s brisk voice call him from a few yards away. They were bundled up in a thick crimson scarf, bare toes sticking out the ends of their Birkenstocks.

“Long time no see. I thought you were going upstairs to change?”

“I _was_.”

“What, sock still on the doorknob?”

“Adam’s feeling under the weather this morning.”

Eliot bounced their eyebrows at him suggestively. As he trailed Eliot out the doors and into the crisp November air, the phone in his front pocket buzzed. A one word text from Adam filled up the screen.

_Thanks_.

* 

Sunday morning rolled around before Fletcher received confirmation that the coast was clear.

He was relieved to know Adam was safe, but at the moment, slightly more relieved at the prospect of a shower and a change of clothes. He tapped at the door, feeling greasy and off kilter. Adam’s voice grounded him as he called to Fletcher from the other side.

“Door’s open.”

Somehow, the regularity of the scene surprised him as much as the nightmarish one the morning before.

Almost everything was back to normal. There were still dents in the molding, but the floors and walls were spotlessly clean. A coat of fresh paint had been applied to where it had been scraped off. Their beds were perfectly made with matching navy-and-white bedding. Fletcher spotted a pile of Target bags on the floor beside Adam’s desk. There was even a new Pride flag, resting in its original corner next to Fletcher’s unpacked boxes of winter clothes.

There was not a motorcycle or crab leg in sight. 

Adam was sitting crisscross on the dormitory floor, a spread of colorful cards carefully laid out in front of him. Fletcher toed off his shoes and tossed his satchel onto his new comforter. 

“Where’s Ronan? Back to Virginia already?” 

“He stayed with his brother last night.”

“Declan?”

Adam looked up from his cards with a cautious look. He was Adam, and he wasn’t.

“Declan, yeah.”

Fletcher knelt and scooted himself to sit opposite him. Adam swept the cards up with the same precision Fletcher had seen him use on playing cards countless times before. The familiarity of Adam’s movements reconstructed itself in Fletcher’s mind.

“The Tarot? Ironically, I did not see this coming.”

Adam laughed his surprised laugh and Fletcher felt an unexpected flood of relief wash over him.

“Have you always been a practitioner of the divinatory arts?”

Adam smiled one of his curious little smiles. Fletcher couldn't help but feel like he was waiting for Adam’s appraisal of the question. Perhaps it had not been rejected outright, but filed away for later. He brushed a thumb over the well-used deck, like he missed it even as he held it.

“My friend Persephone gave them to me.”

“Does Persephone know Gansey?”

“She did.”

“Oh.” Adam’s eyes remained fixed on his own hands. Fletcher swallowed. He wasn't sure how much he was allowed to say, so he settled for the minimum. “I’m sorry.”

He watched Adam draw a card off the top of the deck. They both craned their necks to study it—the upside-down image of two identical figures, mirrored on either side of a mountain, rays of inverted sunlight stretching into the carpet.

“You and Ronan?” He looked closer. “Or is this more in the vein of Shelley? Have you happened upon your likeness while walking in the garden, Adam Parrish?”

“I’m not sure.” 

His eyebrows crumpled the way they sometimes did when he was stuck on a particularly difficult reading for class. They sat in silence for a long moment, Adam lost in thought over the interpretation of his reading, Fletcher lost in thought over his interpretation of Adam. 

“What happened to the forest?” The question, which he hadn't meant to ask, was out of his mouth before he could stop it. Adam looked startled, like of all the things he expected Fletcher to ask him, this was the least answerable. “The one behind your parent’s house?”

“It’s gone.”

He said it in the exactly the same way he’d answered about Persephone. It was another one of his wonderful stories—finality and loss and longing that existed in the space of two syllables. Adam Parrish: not unknowable, but as of yet, unknown.

He offered a freshly shuffled deck to Fletcher, who drew his own card off the top of the deck. He flipped it face up on the space of floor between their feet. The King of Cups. Adam cocked his head and made a noise like he agreed with the result. Fletcher thought the figure in the card looked a little like himself.

“Fascinating.”

Adam reverently slid the cards back into their velvet pouch. It was a funny thing, Fletcher thought. No matter how hard one tried, one couldn’t help but betray the things one loved best in the world.

That unreadable smile wrapped back around the corners of Adam’s mouth as he rose and stretched out a hand to help Fletcher back onto his feet.

“Fetch.”


End file.
